When Geoff Larson, left, and his wife, Marcy, founded Alaskan Brewing Co. 25 years ago, it became just the 67th U.S. brewery. This past week, they celebrated the debut of their beers in Houston at Hay Merchant with Hay Merchant's managing partner Kevin Floyd, center.

When Geoff Larson, left, and his wife, Marcy, founded Alaskan...

Here's a riddle I learned Tuesday night: What state lies at the northern, western and eastern extremities of the U.S.?

The answer is Alaska, since parts of its Aleutian Islands chain lie across the 180th meridian.

Then there's this one: How do you move consumer goods from an Alaskan coastal city that has no roads leading in or out?

"By barge," said Marcy Larson, who co-founded Alaskan Brewing Co. of Juneau, Alaska, with her husband, Geoff, 25 years ago. To get their beers to the "Lower 48," the Larsons load it onto barges and sail it to Seattle for distribution from there.

It's all part of the Alaska mystique, the kind of thing that captures the public imagination.

I was talking with the Larsons at Hay Merchant, where Alaskan Amber, White and IPA had just gone on sale that afternoon. They're an engaging couple who seem genuinely excited to be in Texas, where the distributors at Ben E. Keith had been politely but persistently courting them for the past four or five years. The first load arrived in Houston Monday night and the beers were being poured Tuesday, on draft only, at Hay Merchant, both Flying Saucer locations, Petrol Station and Rudyard's British Pub.

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Find Alaskan Brewing Co. beers at:

The Hay Merchant, 1100 Westheimer

The Flying Saucer, 705 Main and 15929 City Walk in Sugar Land

Petrol Station, 985 Wakefield

Rudyard's British Pub, 2010 Waugh

The list of accounts is only going to grow. Expect to find those same beers in bottles around mid-April, followed in May by Alaskan Summer Ale.

And, yes, the acclaimed Smoked Porter will be here in November. But Marcy Larson said Texans can expect a special preview just before the release, when limited amounts of vintage Smoked Porter will be brought down for vertical tastings. Details will come later, but Alaskan has bottles dating as far back as 1993, she said.

Since the first Alaskan Brewing beers rolled off the line in late 1986 (at which time it became the nation's 67th brewery), the Larsons have expanded their business at a measured pace - "sustainable" is how they put it, both in terms of the demand they can realistically meet and the kind of business their 30,000-population city can support. That lack of roads in and out of town also means the brewers have to prepare their production schedules even more carefully. If they run out of malt, for example, it's not easy to get another load delivered quickly.

But grow, the company definitely has. Last year, Alaskan sold 130,000 barrels by distributing in just 12 states, and the Larsons said that while they have long had interest in Texas, they didn't want to enter the market here until they were sure they could support the demand.

"We knew Texas was going to be a big state," said Geoff Larson, a chemical engineer by training whose first job in Alaska was working for a gold-mining operation.

In preparation for its move into the Lone Star state, Alaskan even changed the labels on its Amber, from Amber Beer to Amber Ale, to comply with Texas alcohol code. That part of the code, which required that beers and ales be described on labels based on the alcohol content of the brew, was struck down by a federal judge in December. But the new labels were already in place.

The Larsons are smart, funny and passionate about beer and about the state they've lived in and loved for 30 years. The Amber was based on a beer that was brewed in Alaska as early as 1907. And Geoff Larson said the Winter Ale is brewed with new-growth spruce tips in the manner described in Captain James Cook's diaries during his 18th century expeditions to find a Northwest Passage.

"We try to put a little bit of Alaska in the bottle," Marcy Larson said.

Let's hope they take a little bit of Texas back home with them.

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